Innovation Requires Failure
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman famously said, “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” Failure isn’t fatal, yet many creatives get caught up trying achieve perfection, often at the expense of innovation.
The author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future, Dorie Clark, urges us to stop believing that we have to be perfect:
Innovation of any sort entails risk and trying new things — and that mandates failure. A 100% success rate implies you’re not doing anything new at all… It’s not so much that you’re creating something (such as a product or service) that failed; it’s that you’re steadily improving a series of drafts.
Recognize that innovation requires failure. As paradoxical as it may seem: if you’re failing, you’re doing something right.
